As soon as what we consider to be life is supposed to be told here, the film dies. However, when art becomes an image (sometimes a documentary image), the stiffness of death is lifted. This is the truth of "Cranko" contrary to its intention and ambition, and is simultaneously the consequence of the failure of the film project. John Cranko (1927 to 1973), born in South Africa and raised in London, from where his flight from scandal due to "unlawful sexual acts" brings him to Germany, accomplishes the Stuttgart ballet miracle.

At the beginning, there is also a flashback to childhood, where young John observes through the window a scene of terrible violence, the whipping of a woman. Only the horror of humanity, the artist-choreographer reflects, makes us aware of the beauty of humanity. It is always autobiography – it depends on its transformation.

Arrival in Stuttgart. Cranko is searching for a family, given the broken parental home, to which he nevertheless clung with love for his father. Walter Erich Schäfer (Hans Zischler), the general director of the Württemberg State Theaters, hires him in 1961 – a similarly epochal decision as that of Arno Wüstenhöfer to bring Pina Bausch to the Wuppertal theaters. 

Cranko speaks over whiskey about his religious devotion and the transubstantiation of the physical into the spiritual. As much as we want to believe him, the setting for this and other confessions seems less credible. The attempt to repeatedly let scenes burst into the fantastic, to elevate them above the earthly, and to dissolve them in a dancerly-dreamy manner makes the earthly density of stiffness and clumsiness of the production all the more palpably oppressive.

Cranko is not distant and foreign: the man who loves men and recognizes women in their beauty and talent, the nonconformist, the refuser of the system, the life-hungry, the unstable, the lonely lover, who is abandoned and does not find happiness, an artist who needs no office since he has the ballet hall and the canteen. He, who knows Shakespeare word for word by heart and was of enormous musicality, worked with composers like Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Henze, Britten and created, alone in Stuttgart, more than 50 ballets. Sam Riley is able to portray the nonchalant, charismatic, sad, nostalgic, lost aspects of Cranko. It becomes evident that when the deepest emotions focus solely on artistic work, this can create a specific crisis-like state of life. 

This biopic by Joachim A. Lang has little to do with cinema; it shimmers, sparkles, flies, does not live. It’s a pity that from the artwork Cranko, a small television play, instructional and sentimental piece was made, which one only forgets when the ballet begins to dance, and we see, for example, the balcony and death scene from "Romeo and Juliet." But: Nothing happens in and between the characters. Except, yes, again, except in the danced moments. There, the camera seems unleashed, possessed by the bodies and the drama of the music. 

We meet Jürgen Rose as a set designer; sit with Cranko in Peter Palitzsch’s production of Peter Weiss’ "The Investigation" in 1965 – the decade of renewal, also for the theater; see the work on Shakespeare’s / Prokofiev’s "Romeo and Juliet" and Pushkin’s "Eugene Onegin" to the music of Tchaikovsky (not his opera compositions); experience the celebrated guest performance at the Met in New York, where the company steps out from the shadow of George Balanchine and creates "A Miracle"; we hear about Cranko’s idea of his Brahms "Initials." We see the birth of the stars: Marcia Haydée, Birgit Keil, Richard Cragun ... Then Cranko and his group take over the Schloss Solitude provided to them by Stuttgart (where the first West German ballet boarding school is founded).

Cranko’s ballet-"Steps are not just choreography; it is a conversation!". This is stated in the illustrated book published by Henschel Verlag about the "dance visionary." Steps that do not come from the mind but from the heart. When the German dancers complain in an open letter that the troupe is too international, Cranko, whose sensitivity to racism is heightened, feels betrayed.

Death comes – seemingly – suddenly during a flight. Also for Cranko: He could do everything on stage but little in life. At his grave, the performers and their still-living real role models pass by – as the last Marcia Haydée and her interpreter Elisa Badenes. Thus, the film grows to a historical conclusion.

(After the premiere at Lichtburg, Essen, the cinema release is on October 3.)